Welcome to the A Compendium of Curiosities, Vol. 3 Challenge! In this series, we’ll work… that is, play our way through Tim Holtz’s latest book, which is packed with fantastic tutorials that will take your crafting skills into the stratosphere!

Please take a couple minutes to read through this F.A.Q. It should address any questions you have about how the challenge works and what the (few!) rules are. If you need additional info, please leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help.

Click the photo to buy your signed copy of A Compendium of Curiosities, Vol. 3, from Tim Holtz

GENERAL INFO:A new CC3 challenge will post every OTHER Saturday at 12:01 am Mountain Time, and will close the Friday night before the next challenge is posted, at 11:59pm MT. For help with this conversion, click here.

We’ll work our way through all 34 techniques in the book. However, we will not be doing the techniques in the order they appear in the book. We’re curious people, and we need to mix it up!

We’re looking forward to seeing your wonderful art, and hope you’re able to participate in every challenge. However, we also know that schedules and budgets and life can sometimes get in the way. If you can’t play along with all the challenges, that’s totally fine! Just join in whenever you’re able. You can dive in anytime!

A COMPENDIUM OF CURIOSITIES:
You really MUST have your own copy of A Compendium of Curiosities, Volume 3, in order to participate in the challenges. Neither I nor the Curiosity Crew will be posting the technique instructions, and participants must not do so, either. We want to encourage people to buy this awesome book; giving away the instructions wouldn’t be fair to Tim! I will have no choice but to un-link any entries that don’t follow this rule.

Some of the challenges will be technique-based, others will be product-based. You may use whatever supplies you have on hand for the challenges, but if a technique is centered around a specific product, please use that product. In other words, for a Distress Stain-specific technique, don’t use an ink pad. If a specific die is used, you must use that die.

SUBMITTING YOUR PROJECTS:
We use the awesome InLinkz gadget, which allows you to share your artwork with us and anyone who reads this blog! To link your artwork to the challenge, you’ll need to have it posted online. By far the simplest way is to link from your own blog, but you can also link from online photo-sharing sites like Flickr. (Click her for a tutorial on how to link from Flickr.) Some of these work better than others, and if you have questions about linking from these sites, please send a message directly to InLinkz, as their service it absolutely stellar. I’m sorry that I’m unable to provide tech support in this arena!

You are more than welcome to submit your CC3C pieces to any other challenges you wish, as long as you link back to this blog and clearly state that your piece has been submitted to the Tim Holtz Compendium of Curiosities 3 Challenge at cc3challenge.com.

You’re welcome to submit more than one project to a challenge, but each must have its own dedicated link. In other words, you must create separate posts on your blog (or image in your online photo album) for each piece. You may not link the same project more than once.

This challenge is about inspiration and sharing the joy of creativity. Please do not use it as a place to promote your business or organization. Any entries that do not follow this rule will be deleted.

Though not an absolute requirement, we strongly encourage you to create a brand new piece for the challenges, even if it’s a technique you’ve done before. Why miss another opportunity to get spectacularly inky?!

I’m sorry, but once a challenge is closed I absolutely cannot link your art to it, so please don’t ask because it just makes me feel bad.

Mario Rossi is the KING of social media and an all-around wonderful person!

PRIZES AND SPONSORS:Tim and Mario have given us an amazing and generous array of items to award throughout the course of the CC3C for which we are deeply grateful! These will be assembled into 34 collections, and one will awarded to our “Curiosity Crew’s Choice” for each of the challenges in this series. To be eligible to win this special prize, you must submit your own work of art that follows the challenge guidelines, and you must also visit each of the Curiosity Crew’s blogs and leave a comment. Simply click on their project photos in the challenge post and you’ll be magically transported to their respective blogs. After the challenge closes, the Curiosity Crew will select a winner. It’s a tough process because there are so many truly wonderful pieces submitted, but here’s how we choose the winner:

1. The project adheres to all rules of the challenge– i.e. uses the technique (or featured product) correctly, does not post instructions for the technique, visits and leaves comments on each Curiosity Crew host’s blog.

2. The featured technique/product is creatively used and highlighted as central to the piece.

3. Once it’s been established that the first two points have been met, we consider the overall excellence in the entry. Each Crew member chooses several pieces that she believes are exceptional examples of the technique. We compare numbers and see if any one piece received a majority of votes. If not, we narrow it down by voting on all the nominated pieces, and continue narrowing the field until we have a winner. We prefer this method of choosing a winner rather than by a random drawing because we want to promote great art and a sharing of techniques rather than people just throwing something together in hopes of winning something.

I’m also delighted to tell you that each challenge will be sponsored by one of our wonderful online partners— Inspiration Emporium and The Funkie Junkie Boutique! You’re eligible to win this prize as soon as you submit a qualifying piece to the challenge, provided you mention the sponsor in your post. Winners will be chosen via Random Number Generator. We’re so very appreciative of our sponsors’ support, and encourage you to shop with them!

THE CURIOSITY CREW:
I’m honored that some of the most talented artists I know are here to share their own projects to inspire you! Anita Houston, Annette Green, Candy Colwell, Cheryl Grigsby, Hels Sheridan, Marjie Kemper, Susan Mostek and Yvonne Blair are dear friends and awesome crafters! Please check out our Curiosity Crew Page, where you’ll find links to their blogs and social media info… and learn how they describe Tim Holtz in one word!

SOCIAL MEDIA:
If you’d like to share your projects via Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, please use the hashtag #CC3C so it will be easy to find and admire them!